Tuesday, May 5, 2026
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Eugene Haberman, an Anchorage government watchdog, has passed

A man who attended nearly every Anchorage Assembly meeting, including special meetings, has died, Must Read Alaska has learned.

Eugene Haberman testified on almost every item on the agenda, much to the annoyance of Anchorage Assembly members. But over the years, he had perfected the art of the 3-minute time limit, including the preamble that he always included:

“My name is Eugene Haberman. I follow the public process. When the public process is done appropriately, the decisions made by the governing body is more likely to be in the public interest.”

In June, Haberman was heading to Anchorage from his home in Wasilla to testify at an Assembly meeting. He was in a serious car accident, and was covered with blood and glass, as he described it. But his friends helped him get suited up and cover his wounds, and he made it to the meeting — but not in time for public testimony. The Assembly would not accept his testimony since he was late, and he wrote about the event in The People’s Paper.

At one point, the Assembly took up an ordinance designed to try to limit his participation.

With three minutes allowed for each public hearing item, Haberman’s participation in a meeting could stretch to 15 minutes, irritating members such as Christopher Constant, who once said, “While the public may come for a public hearing on a specific item, he (Haberman) comes and testifies on multiple items every single night — sometimes as many as 10 or 15 items,”

At a recent Assembly meeting, Haberman fainted and was attended to in the Assembly Chambers by a medic. He was 70 years old. He was said to have died a few days later at home; we are unable to confirm the time and place of his passing.

Haberman also attended many meetings of the Anchorage School Board and public meetings in the Mat-Su Valley, where he lived. He always dressed dapperly in a suit and tie to attend public meetings, and since the pandemic started, he was always seen in an N95 mask.

He was known as a kindly but persistent man who had lived in Alaska for more than 43 years. During the 1980s, he published a periodical called “Gay Alaska,” to promote the gay lifestyle in the 49th state. He also worked as a doorman for the Sheraton Hotel downtown in his earlier years.

At the Oct. 12 Assembly meeting he admonished the Assembly for allowing the crowd in the room to become unruly. But earlier this year, he was convicted for a misdemeanor charge of Cause Fear Of Injury in Palmer.

The cause of his death is not known by Must Read Alaska.

Anchorage Assembly will limit public attendance at Wednesday’s meeting, first public hearing on budget

The Anchorage Assembly meeting on Wednesday is likely to be calmer than recent ones, if only because the public won’t be attending. The Assembly is enforcing a limit on public participation. No more than 125 will be allowed into the Assembly Chambers, due to the Assembly’s new rules, although there are many items of public interest, including the proposed 2022 budget.

See the agenda here.

Also, face masks must be worn by everyone during all meetings of the Assembly, whether it’s in the chambers, or the next-door Wilda Marston theater, which will be limited to 150 people.

The Assembly is taking up a resolution concerning the homelessness plan that has been under negotiation for months.

After Mayor Dave Bronson was elected, he proposed a plan for dealing with the drug- and alcohol-fueled homelessness situation in Anchorage. For over a year and a half, homeless people have been housed in the Sullivan Arena, where hockey games used to be played. The cost for operating the Sullivan as a homeless shelter is about $3 million a month; currently 420 people are sheltering at night in the facility, at a cost of more than $7,000 per person, per month.

The Assembly refused to entertain Bronson’s homelessness plan after his election, which the liberal majority opposed. The plan involved a navigation center to get the people the services they need — drug treatment, medical treatment, housing, and jobs. Instead, the Assembly dug in its heels, but finally accepted an offer from the mayor to negotiate.

Tonight’s plan to be considered by the Assembly is the result of over 22 meetings, each running several hours, mediated by retired Admiral Tom Barrett.

The Assembly sent three members to these meetings — Meg Zaletel, Chris Constant, and John Weddleton. From the Mayor’s Office, Craig Campbell, Larry Baker, and John Morris represented.

If the policy passes the Assembly tonight, there’s still a lot of work to be done to finalize a plan, and because of the Assembly delays, the Sullivan will remain the mass homeless shelter for the winter, as long as FEMA money keeps coming. That agenda item is explained more here.

Also on the agenda for the meeting is approving an item to create a improvement district for Midtown Anchorage. Improvement districts allow special taxes to be levied for the purpose of improving the area, much in the way downtown Anchorage has been improved by such a taxing device.

The Assembly intends to spend $100,000 of federal ARPA Covid relief money to set up the special taxing district.

The Assembly will also take public testimony on an ordinance that would require the mayor to bring his appointees forward for confirmation immediately, or as soon as the Assembly requests it. That ordinance is being offered because the liberal majority on the Assembly want to axe some of the mayor’s appointees, who serve in a temporary capacity until they are approved by the Assembly.

The specific language is: “An appointment for a principal executive or department head position subject to assembly confirmation may be scheduled for a confirmation hearing and set on a meeting agenda for a confirmation vote by the assembly chair at any time after such person is hired or receives compensation for the position, or is otherwise serving in the position in a provisional, temporary, or acting capacity. Submittal of a memorandum from the mayor or designee is not a prerequisite for this action by the chair, and lack of such memorandum does not preclude a confirmation vote.”

That ordinance is here.

Several appointees of the mayor are also up for confirmation during the meeting, including Dan Zipay for Solid Waste Services, Bradly Coy, Municipal Traffic Engineer, Joe Gerace, Health Department Director, and James Winegarner, Director of Real Estate

The Assembly will also open public testimony on the mayor’s proposed budget. The Assembly intends to get that portion of the meeting started by 8 pm. Those items include:

FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Ordinance No. AO 2021-97, an ordinance adopting the 2022 General Government Capital Improvement Budget, Office of Management and Budget.14.B.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 605-2021.
14.C.                            FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Resolution No. AR 2021-323, a resolution adopting the 2022-2027 General Government Capital Improvement Program, Office of Management and Budget. 14.C.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 606-2021.
14.D.                            FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Resolution No. AR 2021-324, a resolution adopting the 2022-2027 Six Year Fiscal Program, Office of Management and Budget.14.D.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 607-2021.
14.E.                            FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Ordinance No. AO 2021-98, an ordinance adopting and appropriating funds for the 2022 Municipal Utilities/Enterprise Activities Operating Budgets and the 2022 Municipal Utilities/Enterprise Activities Capital Improvement Budgets, Office of Management and Budget. 14.E.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 608-2021.
14.F.                            FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Resolution No. AR 2021-325, a resolution approving the 2022-2027 Municipal Utilities/Enterprise Activities Capital Improvement Programs, Office of Management and Budget. 14.F.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 609-2021.
14.G.                            FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Ordinance No. AO 2021-99, an ordinance adopting and appropriating funds for the 2022 Operating and Capital Budgets of Anchorage Community Development Authority, Office of Management and Budget. 14.G.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 610-2021.
14.H.                            FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Ordinance No. AO 2021-104, an ordinance amending Anchorage Municipal Code Sections 26.70.060, 26.70.070, 26.70.080, and 26.70.090 to increase rates for the Solid Waste Services Refuse Collection Utility14.H.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 637-2021.
14.I.                            FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Ordinance No. AO 2021-105, an ordinance amending Anchorage Municipal Code Sections 26.80.050 and 26.80.070 to increase rates for the Solid Waste Services Disposal Utility.14.I.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 639-2021.
14.J.                            FIRST PUBLIC HEARING: Ordinance No. AO 2021-108, an ordinanceapproving proposed rate increases by the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility for submission to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility. 14.J.1. Assembly Memorandum No. AM 677-2021.

Daily Covid count: 560 Alaskans caught it

Tuesday’s count for new positive Covid diagnoses in Alaska was 560, a decrease of 13 percent from last week. Since March of 2020, 131,056 out of 730,000 Alaskans have been infected with the virus; 690 are counted to have died because of it. The average number of positive tests per day over the past seven days is 685.

Alaska hospitals currently have 243 Covid patients and hospitals are near or at capacity. 23 percent of patients in Alaska hospitals have Covid and 33 Covid patients are on ventilators.

There are 24 ICU beds available for adults in Alaska and 291 non-ICU beds available, according to the state’s data dashboard. Providence Medical Center is the only hospital in Southcentral Alaska with openings in its ICU. Fairbanks Memorial Hospital’s ICU is near capacity.

According to the Anchorage Municipality’s dashboard, 11.3% of the 443 patients who went to an emergency room on Monday were there due to Covid symptoms. There are 112 people with Covid in Anchorage hospitals; one of them is considered a minor.

69 percent of Alaskans over the age of 12 are “fully vaccinated.”

More information at the State Covid dashboard.

Archbishop officially disassociates Holy Rosary Academy as official Catholic school

On Oct. 27, 2021, Holy Rosary Academy, one of the most academically successful private schools in Alaska, has been separated from the Catholic Church by the top Catholic in the state, the Archbishop of Anchorage-Juneau

In a letter to the school, Archbishop Andrew Bellisario wrote that the school had not met his nine mandates, which included provisions involving curriculum and health mandates. Some Catholics reached out to Must Read Alaska and said the mandates included a mask mandate for students. The crackdown from the archbishop started several months ago and the school and his office have been negotiating since.

Bellisario’s Tuesday letter was a followup from last week’s ultimatum. In it, he acknowledged he had heard form Catholics wanting him to reconsider.

“I understand the concerns and frustration with this situation and I share in their disappointment. It does worry me that some children and parents feel they are being abandoned by their Archdiocese. It is important for me to express that I have always kept the care, education and safety of the children and all Catholics of the Archdiocese in the forefront of my decision,” he wrote.

“As your Archbishop, I am ultimately responsible for every Catholic institution in the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau, including any privately owned and operated Catholic school. I have insisted that the members of the Board of Trustees accept the minimum standards that I specified in order to fulfill my obligation under Church law to protect all of the people of God in this Archdiocese, including those served by Holy Rosary Academy. In any diocese, it is the bishop who has the authority to determine whether a school is a Catholic school,” he wrote.

“I respect the right of the members of the Board of Trustees to make decisions for Holy Rosary Academy. The Board of Trustees cannot expect the privileges of a Catholic school without accepting the obligations of this recognition. I have clearly explained what is necessary to grant Catholic recognition to Holy Rosary Academy in the new Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau. I want to do so, but it is impossible for me to grant recognition without acceptance of the minimum standards that I specified,” Bellisario wrote.

“Regrettably, as of today, October 26, 2021, I do not recognize Holy Rosary Academy as a Catholic school. Holy Rosary Academy does not have the obligations or privileges of a Catholic school in the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau. The students. parents. families, staff and supporters of Holy Rosary Academy will always be welcome to celebrate Mass and receive the sacraments in their own parishes. If, at any time, the members of the Board of Trustees decide to agree to accept and adhere to the minimum standards of a Catholic school as I have specified.
they are welcome to request recognition of Holy Rosary Academy as a Catholic school in the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau,” the he wrote.

The school board of trustees and headmaster sent a note to parents on Wednesday morning, acknowledging the decision.

“We have prayed fervently, offered Masses, adored Our Lord for hours on end seeking guidance and a peaceful resolution to this situation, and we have our answer. We must trust in His will and go forth confident in the work we are doing here at the School, a vibrant and beautiful place of classical learning, Catholic faith, and true joy. With record enrollment, strong fundraising, an amazing faculty, and outstanding recognition for HRA this year, a bright future lies ahead for our students, families, and staff,” the school wrote to the Holy Rosary community. The school has an enrollment of about 150 students, 39 percent of whom are racial minorities. 14% of students are of Asian or Pacific Islander, or of Hawaiian heritage, and 10% are hispanic.

Starting Wednesday, Holy Rosary Academy will be known as a “Classical School in the Catholic Tradition,” but not a church-controlled Catholic school.

“This will have no impact on our desire to form saints and students ready for a life well-lived,” the board wrote. “We will continue to offer our school as a model for living by the laws of our Creator as we depend on the Trinity, Our Blessed Mother, and the angels and saints to guide us in our efforts to lead others to sanctity. Our classrooms will remain filled with the wisdom of the ages, our hearts will remain open to Truth, Beauty and Goodness. In conversation with the Church fathers, our souls will still reach towards heaven and the open arms of our Christ and His Father,” the board wrote to parents.

New report finds Anchorage 55 out of 95 U.S. cities for ease of setting up business

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new report finds that Anchorage ranks 55th out of 95 cities in the country in terms of how easy it is to set up and run a business. Colorado Springs was rated as the easiest place in the country to do so, while Charleston, West Virginia was the most difficult

Unlike many studies that measure regulations at the state level, annual study focuses on city-level regulations across North America.

“This report should serve as a wakeup call,” said Bernadette Wilson, Alaska director of Americans for Prosperity. “Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. We need less government regulations to support Alaska’s entrepreneurs and foster an environment that will create jobs and grow our economy. AFP-AK is calling on state lawmakers to prioritize meaningful improvements to ensure Alaska is a great place to do business.” 

Through broad-based grassroots outreach, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is driving long-term solutions to the country’s biggest problems. AFP activists engage friends and neighbors on key issues and encourage them to take an active role in building a culture of mutual benefit, where people succeed by helping one another. AFP recruits and unites Alaskans behind a common goal of advancing policies that will help people improve their lives. For more information, visit www.AmericansForProsperity.org

Prominent cutting edge doctors come to Anchorage for early-treatment summit

Dr. Robert Malone, one of the primary inventors of the mRNA vaccine technology used in the Pfizer and Modern Covid vaccines, is one of the speakers at event on Saturday that is sure to rattle the mainstream medical establishment in Alaska, and has already led to “anti-vax” insinuations by the mainstream media.

The Alaska Early Treatment Summit takes place from 8 am to 5 pm at ChangePoint Church, 6689 ChangePoint Drive in Anchorage. Although the church is not sponsoring the summit, it has rented out the facility to a group of doctors and other medical professionals who are remaining anonymous to prevent backlash from medical colleagues who are pushing the Covid-19 vaccine widely as the only defense against the virus.

“Our main goal of this event is to discuss early treatment of Covid-19. We know that if we can treat early (within the first week), we can affect the outcome of Covid with the goal of decreasing hospitalizations and deaths, regardless of vaccine status. That is our main message,” said an Anchorage doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Unfortunately, the vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission of this disease and that’s why it’s not the answer to this problem.”

Dr. Malone will be joined by Dr. Richard Urso, Dr. Ryan Cole and an unannounced guest speaker with expertise on the origins of the coronavirus. That speaker’s name is kept from the media for security reasons, according to one of the organizers who spoke to Must Read Alaska on background.

Malone invented mRNA vaccine technology when he was at the Salk Institute. His research continued at Vical, a biopharmaceutical company, in 1989, where he designed the first in-vivo mammalian experiments. His work on the mRNA technology has led to over 10 patents. Malone was also an inventor of DNA vaccines in 1988 and 1989.

Dr. Urso is a Texas ophthalmologist who studied medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and went on to complete his residency in ophthalmology at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. He concluded with a fellowship in oculoplastics and reconstructive surgery at the University of Texas branch at Galveston. He has served as an ophthalmologist and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston as well as Assistant professor in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Urso has been involved in drug repurposing in addition to drug development and has received FDA approval for his novel wound-healing drug .

He is a member of America’s Frontline Doctors, a group that is treating patients across the country for Covid, using a combination of Ivermectin, at times hydroxychloroquine, plus other treatments involving Vitamin D, Zinc, Quercetin, and anti-inflammatories. The group of doctors has been featured on OAN, in Epoch Times, and other non-mainstream media, and the mainstream medical community and media casts the group in a poor light.

Cole, another member of America’s Frontline Doctors, is a board-certified dermatophathologist (AP & CP) and the CEO/Medical Director of Cole Diagnostics in Idaho. He has worked as an independent pathologist since 2004. He attended Ackerman Academy of Dermatopathology for his dermatopathology fellowship (chief fellow) after completing a residency in anatomic and clinical pathology with a surgical pathology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. He has done extensive research/training in immunology.

Alaska Covid Alliance, the group sponsoring the event, is keeping local supporters’ and sponsors’ names private — these professionals have too much to lose if their colleagues decide to stop referring patients to them or if they are reported to the state medical board.

Alaska Public Media threw shade on the conference, writing, “The conference claims to have a mission of spreading information about COVID-19 treatments and patient rights, but most of the speakers are not infectious disease experts and are advocating for treatments that are not supported by research.”

“Malone now claims that the vaccines actually make the disease worse, something the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is false. A profile in The Atlantic magazine says that Malone is careful to distance himself from the “anti-vax” label, but he has appeared alongside people who have spread vaccine misinformation,” Alaska Public Media wrote.

The public broadcasting station also noted that America’s Frontline Doctors have seen their videos “removed from some major social media sites for spreading false information about the vaccine.” And the news station writes that Urso “was investigated and cleared for prescribing hydroxychloroquine to patients to treat COVID-19,” a treatment the news station claimed is “disproven.”

Malone, Urso, and Cole have been traveling the country to speak to Americans, and are on a mission to reach people in every state. At a conference in another state, they met similarly minded medical professionals from Alaska who agreed to coordinate the upcoming Saturday summit.

Some medical professionals is concerned that the Covid-19 vaccines are “leaky,” which means that the virus can easily defeat the one mechanism the vaccine is using to protect people. Leaky vaccines can lead to breakthrough cases of an illness.

Although the doctors are not necessarily anti-vaccine, many of these dissident doctors believe that treatments for the inflammation and blood clots that are brought on by Covid are best done early, and that too little focus is given to this area of healing, while emergency rooms fill up and patients are being put on ventilators after the virus has made a stronghold in their bodies, rendering their immune systems too weak to fight.

Blowout in Midtown: Voters keep Zaletel

Early returns in the recall election in Midtown Anchorage show voters are choosing to retain Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel by a margin of 61.2% to 38.8%.

Ballots will continue to come in for several days in this mail-in only election; the deadline was 8 pm on Tuesday, but it’s unlikely the results will be reversed with such a large margin.

9,320 votes were counted Tuesday night out of the approximately 36,000 ballots that were mailed to voters in the Midtown district — and across the country. 5,702 votes were counted to retain Zaletel, while 3,618 voters want her gone. Sources say that at least another 4,000 ballots may come in.

Zaletel is the second Assembly member from midtown to survive a recall election in seven months. Felix Rivera faced a recall election in April during the regular municipal election, and survived it 56.5% to 43.5%.

Zaletel’s defense received enormous financial support from a New York union fund called UNITE HERE, which provided $70,000 to a local independent expenditure group called Stand Up for Meg Zaletel. That group was led by AFL-CIO President Joelle Hall. Another group led by Zaletel herself had raised about $60,000 to defend the assemblywoman, for a total of more than $130,000.

That historic spending to retain a member of the Assembly worked for her. The group that launched the recall had local donations, including a $75,000 contribution from Mark McKenna, of McKenna Brothers Paving in Anchorage and $15,000 from James Protzman, of Pacific Properties of Anchorage.

The challenge for those mounting recall elections in Anchorage is clear — getting signatures on a petition is one thing, but getting a win is of an entirely different order. Even an assemblywoman who rarely shows up to in-person meetings, who authored a punishing mask ordinance with draconian penalties (amended out by others in the final version), and who consistently votes to shut down the public process was able to survive being recalled.

The District 4 area of Anchorage stretches from the Rogers Park neighborhood south to Abbott Road, west to C Street, with parts of Spenard. That portion of Anchorage also majority voted for President Joe Biden in last year’s presidential election.

The group trying to boot Zaletel from the Assembly was comprised of those who were angry with the Assembly for using CARES Act funds to build out a homeless network of housing and drug abuse services. It was a plan that Zaletel had her fingerprints on with former Mayor Ethan Berkowitz, who left office early one year ago on Oct. 23, after scandalous allegations.

The homeless plan never came to fruition, although the Assembly approved purchasing the Golden Lion hotel using proceeds from the sale of Municipal Light and Power to Chugach Electric, with some members of the public saw as a misuse of the funds from the sale.

Railroad board rescinds its vaccine mandate, for now at least

Must Read Alaska has learned that the board of the Alaska Railroad Corporation has met and has rescinded its decision to mandate Covid-19 vaccines for all its employees.

The railroad’s CEO Bill O’Leary sent a letter to employees last Friday, giving everyone a deadline of Dec. 8 to be vaccinated. About half of the employees are already fully vaccinated, and some employees began to talk about striking as a result of the mandate.

The board said the mandate was the result of President Joe Biden’s September executive orders requiring all federal workers, federal contractors and businesses with more than 100 employees to be fully vaccinated for Covid-19. The Alaska Railroad has numerous federal contracts, but the question remains whether the federal government will take a draconian action against the railroad and the Alaskans and military community it serves.

An official announcement is expected.

Bert Cottle jumps back into race for Mat-Su Borough mayor

Bert Cottle has made it a three-way again. After dropping out of the election for Mat-Su Borough mayor due to health issues involving chemotherapy, three weeks later Cottle has said he’s back in.

“That’s right, I’m still in the race for Mat Su Borough Mayor. Initially I tried to withdraw from the race after finding out I was going to have to go through chemo therapy. This would make it difficult to campaign, attend community council meetings and candidate debates. But the withdrawal time had already passed, so my name remains on the ballot. Since that time, I have responded well to my chemo treatments, and I have had many calls and messages from residents asking me to stay in the race. So I have made the decision to actively get back in this race and give it 100 percent. Although I’m feeling positive about my ability to be effective as mayor, if for any reason in the future I would have to resign from office, a special election would take place. This would open up the opportunity for a whole new list of candidates and more choices for borough residents. If you still believe in a bright future for the Borough and feel I am the one to help get us there, I ask for your vote on November 2nd,” Cottle wrote on Facebook.

Cottle is the former mayor of Wasilla. Other candidates for borough mayor are Edna DeVries, currently the mayor of Palmer and Matthew Beck, formerly on the borough Assembly.